Showing posts with label black presidents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label black presidents. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

i'm just hoping blair underwood doesn't end up sounding like al pacino in scarface

I was already intrigued by the ads I saw for the new NBC series The Event. The mix of science fiction and political conspiracies seemed right up my alley. Now I just found out that in the fictional world of the show, the president is an Afro-Cuban-American named Elias Martinez. Should be interesting. I think he's probably the only Afro-Cuban character on national (English-language) television since Gina Torres (who is Afro-Cuban herself) played Anna Espinosa on Alias.

The Grio: Playing a black president gets complicated in age of Obama by Ronda Racha Penrice

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

if he was president...

Some of you may have heard that former Fugees-member Wyclef Jean is considering a run for President of Haiti. For those of us who like his music and are moved by his lyrics it is tempting to assume that he would be a wonderful choice.



But some are questioning that assumption by pointing to some of Wyclef's connections to right-wing elements of the Haitian polticial scene.

To cut to the chase, no election in Haiti, and no candidate in those elections, will be considered legitimate by the majority of Haiti’s population, unless it includes the full and fair participation of the Fanmi Lavalas Party of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Fanmi Lavalas is unquestionably the most popular party in the country, yet the “international community,” led by the United States, France and Canada, has done everything possible to undermine Aristide and Lavalas, overthrowing him twice by military coups in 1991 and 2004 and banishing Aristide, who now lives in South Africa with his family, from the Americas.

[...]

Fanmi Lavalas has already been banned from the next round of elections, so enter Wyclef Jean. Jean comes from a prominent Haitian family that has virulently opposed Lavalas since the 1990 elections. His uncle is Raymond Joseph – also a rumored presidential candidate – who became Haitian ambassador to the United States under the coup government and remains so today. Kevin Pina writes in “It’s not all about that! Wyclef Jean is fronting in Haiti,” Joseph is “the co-publisher of Haiti Observateur, a right-wing rag that has been an apologist for the killers in the Haitian military going back as far as the brutal coup against Aristide in 1991.


(For more see: Wyclef Jean for president of Haiti? Look beyond the hype by Charlie Hinton, with editing assistance from Kiilu Nyasha)


Tuesday, August 26, 2008

here's another thing i don't get...

I don't believe that all those "Clinton supporters" are really defecting over to McCain... some of those have to be Republicans who are just trying to mess with the polls. After all, why wouldn't the angry progressive left-of-center women (other than Rosanne) go over to Cynthia McKinney & Rosa Clemente?

Shoot, if Hillary had gotten the nomination and I didn't feel cool about how it went down and I lived in a "safe" state, I would totally vote for them. An African-American woman for prez with an Afro-Latina for VP running on a totally progressive platform?

McKinney & Clemente: 2008
All Things Cynthia McKinney
Rosa Clemente's MySpace Page
Green Party



Planet Grenada:
who is black?
political bits

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

morrison endorses obama for president

Associated Press: Morrison Endorses Obama for President (actually, I found out through La Chola who got it from Diary of an Anxious Black Woman)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The woman who famously labeled Bill Clinton as the "first black president" is backing Barack Obama to be the second.

Author Toni Morrison said her endorsement of the Democratic presidential candidate has little to do with Obama's race — he is the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas — but rather his personal gifts.

Writing with the touch of a poet in a letter to the Illinois senator, Morrison explained why she chose Obama over Hillary Rodham Clinton for her first public presidential endorsement.

Morrison, whose acclaimed novels usually concentrate of the lives of black women, said she has admired Clinton for years because of her knowledge and mastery of politics, but then dismissed that experience in favor of Obama's vision.

"In addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don't see in other candidates," Morrison wrote. "That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. It is too bad if we associate it only with gray hair and old age. Or if we call searing vision naivete. Or if we believe cunning is insight. Or if we settle for finessing cures tailored for each ravaged tree in the forest while ignoring the poisonous landscape that feeds and surrounds it.

"Wisdom is a gift; you can't train for it, inherit it, learn it in a class, or earn it in the workplace — that access can foster the acquisition of knowledge, but not wisdom," Morrison wrote.

In 1998, Morrison wrote a column for the New Yorker magazine in which she wrote of Bill Clinton: "White skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas."

Obama responded to Morrison's endorsement with a written statement: "Toni Morrison has touched a nation with the grace and beauty of her words, and I was deeply moved and honored by the letter she wrote and the support she is giving our campaign."

See also: black presidents (part six)